Saturday, September 5, 2015

Review: Web of Spider-Man #129

Web of Spider-Man #129, "Time Bomb Pt. 2: By My Hand, Mary Jane Must Die!"
Written by Tom DeFalco (plot) and Todd DeZago (script), Penciled by Steven Butler, Inked/finished by Randy Emberlin

Web of Spider-Man 129 Cover


In the podcast I appear in, I had some negative things to say about "Spider-Man: The Clone Saga," a bizarre late 2000s miniseries written by Howard Mackie and DeFalco in an attempt to tell a condensed, "true to the original concept" clone saga story. In short, it's a bizarre mish-mash that chickens out about absolutely everything and is full of incredibly awkward dialogue and revives evil Harry Osborn for no reason. I'm not going to tell you the clone saga is great (it wasn't, by and large), but it did have genuine pathos when, say, Doctor Octopus saves Spider-Man's life and willingly surrenders, expecting to face Spidey next time only to be murdered by Kaine. Or Aunt May's legitimately great death issue that got rid of a character that hadn't been particularly useful in about 15 years in a touching, heartfelt way (later crapped on by John Byrne at his dirt-worst). But I'm not here to review those issues! I'm returning to Web of Spider-Man!